AMD FX-8370E Review

Table of Contents

Introduction

The rise in ever-smaller computing devices has gone hand-in-hand with the need for ever-smaller power sources—and the need to use that power wisely. With the consumer-tech market shifting (and its products shrinking) so rapidly, first from desktops to laptops, then to tablets and smartphones, and now to wearable computers and Net-connected appliances, power efficiency is something that all component makers have been forced to grapple with.

And, believe us, it keeps them up nights.

Grappling with thorny problems of graphics-processor power consumption has led, for example, to Nvidia’s excellent 2014 flagship video card, the GeForce GTX 980. It performed better than practically all single-processor graphics cards available when it debuted, while sipping a good bit less power. Another example? Intel’s cutting-edge Core M processor chips, which are powering a new wave of tablets and convertibles that are fanless and thinner than most people dreamed was possible just a year ago.

In some of its recent products, however, component giant AMD has been slower to react to the new need for power-sipping parts. Graphics cards such as its AMD Radeon R9 290 and Radeon R9 290X are competitive in terms of price and performance, but they’re also more power-hungry than Nvidia’s comparative cards are. And last year, AMD rolled out a consumer CPU, the AMD FX-9590, with an immense 220-watt power draw and one of its hottest-running designs to date. It was an impressive release (in certain situations, it could run at up to a whopping 5GHz), but it was against the tenor of the times.

The New-for-2014 FX Processors

It’s a refreshing change of pace, then, to see AMD offering up, starting in September 2014, a new “E Series” of lower-power processors in the company’s semi-neglected FX line.

The $199 AMD FX-8370E that we’re looking at here, as well as another chip that has debuted alongside it (the AMD FX-8320E, at around $150), both have a thermal design power (TDP) rating of 95 watts. That’s a drop in TDP of nearly 25 percent versus a third new AMD chip, the 125-watt AMD FX-8370 (also $199). We reviewed the FX-8370 (without an "E") just before this processor, and what we found: The FX-8370 is technically a new processor, but in the final accounting it doesn't amount to much more than AMD's 2012-era FX-8350 (which is now $179) with a slightly higher maximum clock speed.

The AMD FX-8370E is different. It has eight cores and a top "Turbo Core" clock speed of 4.3GHz, just like the higher-wattage, non-E version of the FX-8370. It costs the same as the FX-8370, too, but it saves power by running at a much lower base clock speed (3.3GHz, versus the 4GHz base clock of the standard FX-8370). In case the terms are confusing: Both Intel's and AMD's recent processors employ a turbo mode, called "Turbo Core" in AMD's case and "Turbo Boost" in Intel's. At a basic level, both are the same thing: They enable the CPU cores to speed up a bit over the base clock rate when a task demands it and heat-dissipation conditions allow (what the chip makers call "thermal headroom"). So, most of the time, the chip is running at its base clock, but when a demanding workload kicks in, the turbo modes come into play to some extent.

Rather than rattle off a list of specs for all of AMD’s current eight-core FX CPUs, here’s a handy chart, directly from AMD, that summarizes them all...

Note, though, that all of these chips (including the new ones) are still based on AMD's "Piledriver" architecture, which was the basis of the AMD FX-8350 and other FX chips that have been around since 2012. And neither of the FX-8370 chips (the ordinary one or the "E" version) push performance much beyond that of previous high-end chips on the AM3+ platform. So there’s certainly no strong reason to upgrade to one of these chips if you already have a fairly recent high-end AMD FX CPU—unless you want to reduce the cooling requirements of your case and use a little less electricity while computing. For most upgraders with AMD PCs, we don't think that that will be a compelling enough reason.

Also note that the pricing we've cited above for the FX-8000-series processors includes a boxed air cooler/heat sink. However, know that given the higher TDP of the FX-8370 and FX-8350, if you're a serious video editor or otherwise rely heavily on your CPU's raw horsepower, you may want to replace that with a self-contained liquid cooler. We did so in our testing, to make sure the chips ran at optimal speed when maxing out the cores for more than a few minutes at a time (say, when crunching long videos or rendering 3D images). And if you’re planning on overclocking, you’ll definitely want the extra heat-transfer ability gained from using a good liquid cooler. (The FX-9000 series chips practically require one, even running at stock speeds, so you'll have to supply your own with those chips.)

That being said, the AMD FX-8370E, as we’ll see in testing, stuck reasonably close to its higher-watt FX-8370 counterpart in many of our benchmark tests. And its 95-watt TDP, while still not as efficient as current competing Intel Core i5 chips (their TDPs range from 84 to 88 watts), is a significant improvement over other high-end AMD FX chips, especially if you count the highest-end chip in the FX line, the AMD FX-9590, with its enormous 220-watt TDP.

Now, if we were starting from scratch here in late 2014 and buying an AMD CPU for a budget gaming PC or a modest media-editing rig, the AMD FX-8370E is the chip we’d buy. It’s a better balance of performance and power than other recent FX chips. It would also be a good choice if you’ve been running an older quad-core FX chip in an existing AM3+ machine and need an upgrade that will give you better performance (and twice the cores) while also dropping your power and cooling requirements. Older quad-core chips like the AMD FX-4130 Black Edition have 125-watt TDPs, despite their fewer functioning cores.

On the other hand, those building a new PC from the ground up—buying a CPU and mainboard together—and looking for the best performance overall, especially for lightly threaded workloads, will likely be better off considering an Intel chip. The best alternatives at around the same price as the AMD FX-8370E would be the Intel Core i5-4570, which also sells for about $199, or the Core i5-4690K, a more recent Core i5 processor that debuted in the latest refresh of Intel's Haswell line and is unlocked for overclocking. (It sells for between $230 and $250.) As a bonus, these Intel processors have graphics acceleration built into the chip itself. So, if you don't want to buy and install a separate graphics card, you can get by with the Core i5's integrated graphics, and save money.